I have, at home, a picture representing General Thomas studying a map by the light of a camp-fire, on the evening after the first day’s fight at Chicamauga. There is no artistic merit in the picture. But I bought it and have kept it because it represents, though indifferently, several other types of American soldiers. The painter has caught something of the masterful figure of Thomas. Near the great General, seated on a stump and gazing fixedly at the camp-fire, is a middle-aged Lieutenant. With his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, his grave, thoughtful, dreamy expression indicates that his mind has drifted far away from the sights and sounds about him, and is with his wife and children in the dear old home. Lazily watching the two officers is a young soldier on duty as a sentinel, with his gun resting carelessly in the hollow of his left arm. These three figures represent other types of soldiers, and are as characteristic as, though less skillfully drawn than, those of the Rogers group. The dead soldiers I am going to speak of, like those of the Rogers group and the Thomas picture, were only types of hundreds of other volunteers. I have no doubt that, if I merely sketched them, giving no names, every soldier here present would say that I was describing men of his own regiment. I first met one of them in the winter of 1861–2. There was a reorganization of Kansas regiments, and he was transferred to mine, with his company. Born in a small village in New York, he was country-bred, and had a fair education. Square-shouldered, strong-limbed, graceful in movement, and with every muscle and fibre of his body vigorous and healthy, his was a handsome figure. Whether some remote ancestor had transmitted to him the blood of a soldier, I do not know, but I doubt if he had ever thought of war, or of a soldier’s life, before the flash of the gun at Sumter startled the slumbering Nation. He was as modest as he was manly. If he was corrected or reproved for mistakes such as young officers frequently made in the early days of their service, he would blush like a school-girl. But he was a born soldier. His blue-gray eyes were alike steady, quick, and fearless. After three months drill he walked with the erect and martial bearing of a regular; his prompt military salute, never forgotten or omitted on any occasion, was given or responded to with a grace that was at once easy and natural; and his voice, clear as the tones of a silver bugle, had in it the ring of a true commander. He was a Captain, and his company was made up, as most volunteer companies were, of young men and boys who had been the school-mates and friends of their officers. His affection for his boys deepened and strengthened during every day of his service, and they idolized him. But not one of them ever for a moment forgot that he was their Captain, nor did he forget it. The willing respect, the cheerful and prompt obedience he gave to his superior officers, he expected from